Encounter with a Bat

I had nine bats to my credit with only one fatality when #10 dropped down from the attic (their routine point-of-entry) to the darkened hallway outside the bedrooms, to give me my come-uppance.

August heat brings the bats down from the attic, which must be an oven. Obviously, they prefer the cold of the caves that they seek out to hibernate in (the only thing I knew about bats till they started to visit us). Apparently, my attic will do in a pinch. We’re in a row house built by an Albany oil baron in 1871; there are nine in a row on tree-lined Elm Street. We moved in six years ago and didn’t see our first bat till three years ago. They never come earlier than midnight (I swear). First, a scratching noise as they squeeze their elastic bodies through the smallest of openings. That’s in the tiny corner formed by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase with the wall; adjacent is a big window that looks out on the yard, always open except in the dead of winter because Bridget spends a good part of her cat life stretched out full length on the sill taking the sun, when not peering into the night darkness (at what she sees and I don’t). I’m told that the local cats stalk and kill bats, but not our Bridget. At the first flap of wings, she flattens belly-to-the-carpet and flees down the stairs to the safety of the middle parlor floor.

She’s one smart cat because the bat just flies the length of the bedroom hallway and back again, swerving away from my head before collision as I pursue it wielding a long-handled dust mop to knock him out of the air, then throw a bath towel over him, scoop him up and out the window into the night. (Don’t think for a minute that I’m knowledgeable about bat gender: I think of him as a him because of the chestiness displayed in invading my castle at night like a common cat burglar.)

It’s not as hard to bring him down as it used to be. Of late, the bat, once descended, almost immediately runs into the four-and-a-half-foot span of the oscillating ceiling fan over my head as I sit at the computer writing. In fact, if I don’t hear the scratching that announces his visit, I will the thud as he runs into the fan’s blades, then again on his return flight. I don’t see him at first because I work with the lights off, by the illumination of the computer screen. This is new behavior on my bats’ part; in past years, they always avoided the whirring fan blades, owing to their marvelous sonar. And I would chase them up and back in the hallway, into the guest room if the door was open and, occasionally, down the stairs and around the parlor and basement floors till they tired enough that I could connect with the dust mop. It was never a sure thing who would tire first, me or the bat. But, of late, they appear to be flying blind. Are they sick or just youngsters on their maiden flights?

Amazingly, Bat #10, my nemesis, is only stunned by the fan’s blades. But I have a problem: I’m unprepared, lacking an essential tool, a large bath towel. As the bat crawls under the radiator under the windowsill, I rush into the bathroom and grab the hand towel hanging from the ring above the sink. Reaching for him under the radiator, I immediately withdraw my hand as I feel the touch of a fang on the inside of the ring finger of that hand. I persevere, rooting him out with the long handle of a backscratcher, scooping him up gingerly in the hand towel and out the window. I wash the finger with soap and water and pour rubbing alcohol on the area although I can’t detect that the skin is broken.

Before I tossed him out into the night, it occurred to me that I should hold onto him for testing for rabies by the Albany Health Department, but that seemed beyond me just then. Although they can test a dead bat as easily as a live one—so long as the head is intact--I don’t intentionally kill bats. Besides, it felt more like a friendly nuzzle than a serious bite.

Funny thing occurs to me: after I evict them, I never look to see where they go. In the early days, I’d toss them out still wrapped in the towel, then collect the empty towel in the morning. I’ve perfected the technique: now I just shake them out like a housewife airing the bed linen.

Next morning, my doctor insisted I go to St. Peter’s ER to hear that they can’t tell if the bat fang pierced my finger so they recommend a series of rabies shots, to be on the safe side. That’s because once infected, there’s no cure; once the disease reaches the central nervous system, death occurs within days. I’m told that if a bat is at large in a bedroom, for instance, while its occupants are asleep and consequently can’t be sure they haven’t been bitten or come in contact with bat saliva, the shots are recommended. The resident listens to my story, then tells me he has to talk to the County Health Department to get their guidance.

I’m waiting now going on three hours. Will I consent to undergo the vaccinations? I’m of two minds since Bat Control of Greater New York—the young man who rappelled down the back of my house from attic to the second floor three years ago to bat-proof the brick face—told me that upstate bats are rarely rabid. My ponderings are cut short when the resident reports back that Health said I don’t require shots. Go home. Hooray!

I’m at work when Health calls me that afternoon: Ooops! Go back to the ER for shots. I say no, thanks; that bat looked okay to me. A week later, I consult Google and read this description of a rabies infection: In the early stages, malaise, headache and fever, progressing to acute pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression and hydrophobia; finally, periods of mania and lethargy, eventually leading to coma and death. I decide I didn’t know the bat all that well.

Back in the ER, as the doctor is poised to inject the immunoglobulin vaccine at the site of the bite—the inside of my right ring finger—I ask, in a wee small voice: Doesn’t hurt a lot, right? She just smiles and sticks me a dozen times under, on top, and at the base of my poor finger. My wife Rose is present, holding my good hand, so I do not cry out nor do I swoon. Then, an injection in the muscle of each arm and in both thighs, and I’m done. The nurse pronounces me a brave boy and Rose drives me home.

Over the next 14 days, I get one shot in the arm on three occasions at the local Health Department (easypeasee). Where you sign in, the women clerks have a life-like hawk-sized bat suspended from the low ceiling. Really sets the tone. August is still young so I get two more visiting bats. No drama, except #12 alights on my First Edition of “The Boys of Summer,” Roger Kahn’s history of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950’s. When I remove and liberate the bat, I notice that he has left behind a half-inch, elliptical stain on the dust jacket. I’m still pondering its meaning.

© 2013 Robert Knightly

The Killing Fields

An Albany Eye On Crime

Last night he visited me again. Just past midnight, dropping down from the attic into the darkened hallway where I was composing a new story for Weird Tales at my desk in the alcove, the only illumination the pale glow from my computer screen. He flew over my head like always. It was a sweltering August night, my head and face bathed in sweat, the only relief provided by the rapid oscillations of the large ceiling fan overhead. I was only vaguely aware of his presence, then SWAT and, seconds later, SWAT again. Putting on the lights, I see the carcass of the bat lying two steps down on the carpeted staircase, Bridget the cat sniffing it tentatively (Bridget is a scaredy-cat, normally belly to the carpet as she slinks off down the stairs away from bat invaders). I shoo her away and she takes off (Dare I say it? Like a bat out of hell!)

This is my tenth bat but the first one to be done in by a rapidly whirring ceiling fan in the dark. Occasionally when chasing the bat around the hallway with the lights blazing, it might panic and get whacked by the fan, but not mortally. I figure this was a young’un whose radar had a few kinks to work out. So I picked him up in a towel, as is my custom, and dumped him out the window into the yard. He was still there next morning, DOA.

I found out next day that mine was only one of many visitations by the diminutive brown bats to my neighbors’ stately old houses (mine’s a row house built in 1871). The alarms went out over the neighborhood list serve. I confess I have usually found the complaints of my neighbors living in the gentrified precincts of Center Square, Hudson-Park and the Mansion District of Downtown Albany, more than a little silly: suburban types who’d moved into a City and discovered noise, traffic, and college students taking a leak in the alley next to Dunkin’ Donuts, when not stealing flower pots tastefully arranged on the stoops of their townhouses. But this time I found their comments revealing. I report these (with editorial comment to put things in perspective):

(the Bat-a-phile) “Bats are important. They eat huge quantities of insects. The Little Brown Bat can eat 1,000 mosquitoes in a single hour; the Big Brown Bat can consume 6,000 on a good summer’s night. The little brown bats are recovering from white nose syndrome that has wiped them out in the caves around the State. If you don’t want them in your house, you do need to locate and seal the entrance points to your building. If you have a cat, isolate it in another room; my cat loves catching bats!”

(the Stake-Out) “To find out how they’re getting in, stand outside in the evening and watch how they come out of your house. Start watching at sunset, keep your eye on any small openings until one hour after sunset. Remember that bats can fit through a hole the size of your thumb, and move fast. Do this for several consecutive nights… ”
(the Old Hand) “Close off the room the bat’s in. Open the window wide. Turn a light on by the window so the bat can see you and the exit (Bats are not blind). Bats will follow the air flow; eventually it will leave.”

(the Rustic) “Farmers just hold a broom, bristles up, underneath the bat when it has calmed down, then carry the broom gently to the door or window—POOF! Gone!”

(the Poisoner) “I had a problem with bats at camp for years, but when I put rat Decon in the attic crawl space, that got them!”

(the Serial Killer) “ Disable it with a broom, then capture it with a pillowcase. Then hit it with a hammer and dump it in the trash. Works every time.”

From this, you can see that I am surrounded by helpful neighbors. But I don’t think I’ll mention the Incident of the Lethal Ceiling Fan (I keep thinking of Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’, Poe’s ‘Pit and the Pendulum’). No need to excite the more bloodthirsty among the neighbors.

Having come by a new respect for the little guys, I Googled the Bat. In case you didn’t know:

-Bats are nocturnal, they spend their days sleeping (in your attic) and grooming; they have fur and clean themselves like cats. They hunt by night, by “echolocation”. When bats fly, they project a constant stream of high-pitched sounds only their fellow-bats can hear. When the sound waves hit an insect or other object (me, for instance, in my darkened hallway), the bat zeroes in on its prey or avoids the likes of me…That bats look to get tangled in your hair is an Old Wives’ Tale: he’s just heading for that bug on your head…In winter, the bat goes into Hibernation or Torpor like a bear to conserve body heat, energy (presumably, in your attic).

-Bats are rarely rabid, but if they are found to be in a room with a sleeping person,
contact the Health Department; rabies shots are advised since it’s possible to not realize you’ve been bitten (the bat has small, sharp teeth). And, if you can, hold onto the bat for testing. Don’t touch a bat with bare hands, for obvious reasons. Also because he has “bat bugs”, first cousin to the bed bug, who can switch hosts.

-If you decide to evict your bat colony (yes, the bat is a communal creature), bataphiles caution that the exclusion never be done in June, July or August, when there will be present many young that cannot fly. Wait till Fall, when they have learned to fly. The youngsters are tutored in maternal groups. Each mother bat delivers one baby. And that Little Brown Bat can live 40 years.

Should you wish to get more up-close and personal, there is the annual Great Lakes Bat Festival at the Cranbrook Institute of Science and the Bat Zone, in Bloomfield, Michigan, in mid-July. Its purpose: to spread the message that bats are critical to ecosystems around the world, and need our protection. I believe it. If the little brown bats should ever fail, God forbid, to be on duty in my yard on a summer’s night gobbling up 1,000 mosquitoes an hour, that’s The End of Barbequing As We Know It. Believe it!

Robert Knightly

Batman!!!

We had the first of the scorcher days of August a bit early this past week, so at midnight as I sat at my computer in my work alcove on the top floor of my historic rowhouse where the bedrooms are, I couldn’t escape a chill, hearing faint scratching outside the screened window that looks out over the garden. I have a non-working clock hung on the wall in front of me whose face depicts Edgar Allen Poe at HIS desk, quill pen in hand, as a bird (raven, I presume) swoops down at his head. Me, I don’t fear ravens, it’s the bats I keep a weather eye out for.

Since moving into this homestead in Downtown Albany four years ago, I have single-handedly captured and expelled nine bats. They come on sweltering nights, and never before midnight, I swear. I hear the scratching for not quite a full minute, then feel the air disturbed by his passage above my head as I sit at my desk composing. I say “his” but don’t really know bat sex. It’s always just one bat; and he always takes the same flight path: from the corner by the window straight down the darkened hallway to its end by the bedroom door, which, as fate would have it, is always closed, for the sake of a/c in summer and heat in winter. A woman friend wasn’t so lucky, two bats entered her bedroom and did aerial loops till she was awakened by the flapping of their wings. She couldn’t tell the medicos with certainty that she had not been bitten so she underwent a series of rabie shots. Scary? You bet, but I’m not (so long as they stay out of our bedroom).

I have not been hesitant to speak of my prowess in capturing bats; in fact, one neighbor consulted me on my technique. I’m a dustmop man, I explained, knock ‘em down then throw a towel over the stunned creature, then fling him out the window or the front door, easiey-peasey. Lucky thing, the bat is more afraid of me than vice versa. He’s one remarkable bird (he’s a bird, right?); his sonar prolongs our match for some minutes till I can tire him, then fell him. He’ll fly right at my face, then veer away before collision (I don’t think he’s aiming) He never makes a sound. Except for once, early on, when I was a novice at this, and having felled him, but without towel, I held him fast to the floor with the handle of the mop, hearing tiny squeaks as he died. That was my first bat, and out-of-character since I discovered him on our mid- or parlor floor. I thought he was a swallow till he alighted on the ceiling and hung upside down from a cornice.

After the ninth bat last year, I threw in the towel and called in the pros, Bat Control of Greater New York. Two young fellows showed up with ladders and rock-climbing gear. First, they plugged up all the holes in the attic, then rappelled down the back of the house to check for entry points, finally setting a trap in the attic that let out any bat inside while barring reentry. Apparently, bats in the attic were suffering like us from the insufferable heat, and dropped down to my cooler work space; bats can fold themselves up to get through the smallest openings. On occasion, the bat would be taken out by the oscillating ceiling fan over my desk.

August is Bat Month in my house. As I compose in the dark of night in my alcove, I’ll think of Fearless Poe in my clock, but retire before midnight, just to be on the safe side.

Robert Knightly